U.S.—Forts are everywhere. They’re often hastily constructed -- thrown together in less than a minute from pieces of wood (and sometimes stone or steel) -- and often abandoned, the kids who made them running off to make another fort in mere minutes. Parents are baffled, but an easy culprit has been found: video games.

“Kids are constantly playing these games in which fort construction is done without a second thought,” said legislator Clarence Lowe. “They’re being influenced into thinking that people build forts all the time for no reason. They think that’s normal.” Lowe followed up with some dramatic pictures of a two story fort near his house missing a back wall, and then a weird set of stairs that just went high up into the air but led nowhere and seemed to defy physics.

The video game industry is pushing back. “This is pure nonsense,” said video game lobbyist Stewart Blake. “Kids have been building forts since before video games existed. Is every pillow fort a product of some bad influence?” Blake went on to compare this outrage to other times in the past when people falsely blamed video games, such as in the '80s when kids incessantly ate dots and then again in the '90s when kids flew around the world engaging in mixed martial arts competitions out in the street.

“It’s not video games; it’s parenting,” said sociologist Sophie Hicks. “If you instill in your kids the value that forts are something you carefully construct and then guard for decades, this wouldn’t happen. People want to blame video games, but this is on the parents.”

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